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Sure it's easier to slap a tyre on there, but you give up a lot of control that you would otherwise have with a dedicated spring/damper system to a tyre where you have a single parameter that controls all the characteristics of the system. That single parameter also changes as you heat up the tyres, the rate of change also varies with both tyre type and tyre wear.
Would genuinely be interested of hearing any concrete cases where having the tyre doing more suspension work than the suspension system itself.
I'm no expert, but the majority of my final year in uni was focussed on suspension systems design so I'm not clueless on the subject either!
mmccarthy-
but you give up a lot of control that you would otherwise have with a dedicated spring/damper system
What control would you be looking for? The job in this context is to keep the rubber on the road - and the tyre does this when the contact patch is massive and the pressure is comparatively low; it just deforms locally with little impact
on the overall pressure of the tyre because the volume is so large relative to the deformation. So I’m not sure what a rebound / compression system would add.It’s not that the tyre is doing the suspension systems job, it’s doing a different job that you wouldn’t design the suspension system to do because you can’t really square the circle where it needs to deal with two opposing types of input whilst remaining light, predictable and reliable.
Would genuinely be interested of hearing any concrete cases where having the tyre doing more suspension work than the suspension system itself.
Go karts have no suspension systems at all :)
Howard
You are assuming it’s possible to make a suspension system that can react like a tyre to small impacts at very high frequency whilst also dealing with large changes in the weight distribution of the car as it corners, compresses as it goes up hill, has downforce changes as it’s speed changes, etc.
It’s probably doable but it’s way easier, simpler and more reliable to stick a massive tyre at a sensible pressure on.